School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing EngineeringOregon State University

Publications

Evaluating Impact in the ROS Ecosystem

William Curran, Thomas Thornton, and William D. Smart.In "Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)", pages 6213-6219, Seattle, WA, 2015.

The ROS ecosystem is an interconnected web of packages, nodes and people with no efficient means to compare, assess or visualize them. We develop a set of tools consisting of various metrics, a data visualization web app, and an active monitoring system. With these tools, we measure the current state of the ecosystem as well as determine where the community should direct their efforts. We also encourage the community to provide input on potential applications, additional metrics, and further improvements to address the needs of the ROS ecosystem. We incentivize this input by gamifying community contributions to the infrastructure. Encouraging user-driven improvements to the ROS infrastructure through the use of a leaderboard and friendly competition will advance ROS development and community support far into the future.